


38: Window

by SpecialTrampAgentOtters (Elsie1285)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s07e10 Sein Und Zeit, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 19:50:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7120084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsie1285/pseuds/SpecialTrampAgentOtters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A gap-fill Sein Und Zeit drabble in response to the tumblr prompt list. Number 38: Window, as requested by Jackieisboring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	38: Window

Early morning rays dapple across the scuffed and worn floorboards, sunlight veiled in broderie anglaise, stippling across the chaffed leather of a familiar couch and through carmine hair as his fingers twitch in muted muscle-recognition of its sericious strands tangled around them. 

It is early, barely past dawn, and his head thumps with grief. He has cried himself into lethargy, face tight with salt and lassitude. He turns a fraction, nose bumping gently against her temple, as her eyebrows furrow and she nestles further into the back of the sofa. A soft puff of air escapes vermilion lips and she purses them quizzically before relaxing again into a fitful sleep. The light shafts through the venetian blinds, slicing across her bare collar bones, buttermilk and gypsum mottled in the flush of sleep. His hand hovers over them, fancying he can still see the evidence of his fingerprints where they had trailed the night before, his endless gloom leaving a path of coal along the apricot of her neck.

He extricates himself silently from her sheltered grasp and pads to the desk, picking his way through the debris of last night’s quiet unraveling. A sock has lost its mate, separated across the gulf of the coffee table by strewn tissues and her jacket, discarded as his hands lost themselves in her hair, over her face, stroking her limbs, craving her taste to wash away the bitter tang of death. They had risen from their crouch on the floor where she had cradled him, movements mirrored by each other and by the dun of the window. The muted umbra of the panes of glass had reflected their bodies, undulating between the blind’s wooden slats and through shared tears, in the soft glow of the living room as he’d stood to face her, her back to the desk. 

Through the tan wood he’d watched his palms spread along the edges of her waist, tandem twins tentative as she twitched at his heated exploration. He had followed the ripple of light from the desk lamp along her back as he’d tugged the berylline shirt to meet the blazer, pooling on the floor. He was flung back to a motel room in Oregon, candlelight bouncing along the planes of her impossibly tiny waist as the rain clamored against the rattling panes. The silence in his apartment, seven years later, was deafening but she’d shuddered just the same. 

Now, the window blinds brood over the cradle of the phone hanging, forlorn, from the wooden precipice of the edge of the desk, contemplating its own selfish suicide on the end of its spiral noose. There’s a lot of that going around, he thinks. His hustling of the desk in his defeat had rattled its contents and the handset is hiding, dreading a repeat onslaught. He locates it, cowering behind the computer monitor, before replacing it noiselessly in its holder. It curves into its base, yin to yang, order restored. He glances back to the sleeping form on his sofa and tracks the rise and fall of her breath under his Navajo blanket, bare calves curled around each other. 

Last night he had grazed his hands along her jawline, catching her instinctive lean into his palm as his fingertips courted her, playing across the ridges of her face and reading the braille of her lips. So many utterances, so many rejoinders, but in that moment she was stunned stillness, measuring his actions: the escape of a barely-concealed sob; the skip and lurch of his breath as his erection brushed her abdomen; the quiver of his fingers as they deepened around the base of her skull and pressed her lips to his. Later, the gunmetal panes bounced moonlight along the plains of her thighs as she tightened and sang around him on the floor and he forgot himself forever in her, his digits leaving purple imprints on her hips as he keened her name into her shoulder and promised her the world. 

Now, he crosses back to the sofa, where he had half-dragged her, half been dragged. She had wrapped herself in her shirt before slipping into fitful, disoriented sleep, lace panties as black as ink peeking out from its cotton hem and the curve of her cleavage visible above the loose collar. He traces the arc of her cheek, teasing her into waking. She turns, blinking blearily into the morning glare streaming through the window, and parts her lips, a slow, sated smile meeting her eyes. It is a hey-there smile; an it’s-about-time smile, and he returns it. Soon, they will have to re-enter the world, not just as orphans, but as each other’s family. Imminently, she will dress and rise for coffee. He will shower and clear the reminders of last night’s destruction from the room. They will leave to pursue the LaPierre case; they will chase monsters in the dark. 

But in this moment she is framed in fire and gold and amber and he doesn’t wish for stars. He is a lover of the light.


End file.
